Christmas is a busy season full of generosity of spirit and my gift to you was to not burden you with my thoughts. But all good things end and here we are in 2024. To some this will be a year of new beginnings and to others it will be a year of hidden dangers and close encounters. I argue that it will be a year of revealings – an apocalyptic year. In fact, the year has opened with the not-yet-fatal goring of one of the wilder animals of our authoritarian masters.
In the 1980s, Tom Wolf wrote an apocalyptic novel called the Bonfire of the Vanities which was an investigation into the greed and vanities of the modern western world. It has acquired a cult following and the movie version includes a prescient statement from the presiding judge,
“Racist? You call me racist? Well I say unto you, what does it matter the colour of a man’s skin if witnesses perjure themselves. If a prosecutor enlists the perjurers. When a district attorney throws a man to the mob for political gain, and men of the cloth, men of God, take the prime cuts? Is that justice?”
Sound familiar? As popular as the book and subsequent movie are, what is less known are the circumstances which gave rise to the title – the strange pre-occupation and death of Girolamo Savonarola in the last decade of the 15th century. This ascetic, Dominican priest looked at the depravity of Florence during the Italian Renaissance and went completely Ecclesiastes on the city fathers and power brokers.
“God gives some people wealth, possessions and honor, so that they lack nothing their hearts desire, but God does not grant them the ability to enjoy them, and strangers enjoy them instead. This is meaningless, a grievous evil…. Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.”
It was this last bit that concerned Savonarola. For eight years he and his followers encouraged the citizens of Florence to clean up their act; and their walls and their libraries and their minds by burning books, paintings and sculptures that were deemed to breed pride rather than fear of God.
It must have been a compelling message. He replaced the ruling Medici’s with a personal republic and even Botticelli burned some of his own paintings. History has not resolved whether Savonarola was a crazy imposter or a prescient sage. It is ironic that his fear of God was replaced by an interdict by Pope Alexander VI, quite possibly the most corrupt pope in church history. My point in bringing up the concept of a bonfire of the vanities is that perhaps in 2024 we will light the kindling that has been collected to burn away the pride of authoritarian excesses that have typified the past decade or so. Perhaps.
In 2008, Chuck Colson of Watergate fame, was fond of saying that “salvation will never come on Airforce One”. The fire that reduces the vanities will not be political in nature. Rather it will be in the likeness of the Trucker Convoy of 2022. It will come when individuals decide that they have “had a belly full” and are not in the mood for more “happy talk” to borrow from a currently popular podcaster. Revolutions are never orchestrated from the top down.
Back to the fatal goring that opened this new year. It is not my intention to bore you with a recitation of my interpretation of the many revelations I think will occupy the news cycles of 2024. But surely the Marxist project took a direct hit below the waterline when Claudine Gay resigned from her job as the president of Harvard. Her DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) appointment to the office was much lauded in those sunnier days of six months ago. It was touted as the epitome of the virtues of the DEI policy.
“Behold! A Black woman has ascended to the top rung of the academic establishment!”
Would that the Keepers of Sacred DEI Oaths had taken the time to check out her academic credentials. She was Black, she was a woman, and she had a PhD. What more was to be known about her? That was the point of her ascension. Being president of Harvard does not require merit or experience. It demands intersectional box ticking and Ms. Gay ticked a lot of boxes. It was the ultimate middle finger to the white man’s meritocracy. Unfortunately for Ms. Gay it was also the ultimate middle finger to the academic work of another Black woman, Dr. Carol Swain, who was unimpressed by the new Harvard president having copied egregiously and unethically from her own doctoral work.
For the moment, Ms. Gay is being allowed to keep her $900,000 per year salary and her perhaps ill-gotten doctoral parchment. Dr. Swain, however, channeling my disgust at the cheating of Ms. Gay, is not prepared to let the matter remain as it is. She wants the PhD degree to be removed from Ms. Gay to protect the value of both the degree and the institutions that bestow it. She has had a belly full and wants no more happy talk. I wish her Godspeed in that quest.
But what precisely is the animal that was gored by this revelation of Ms. Gay’s academic felony and subsequent extortion? The gored animal represents the heart and soul of the modern Marxist project. It reveals the fatuities of Prime Ministers who claim that “budgets balance themselves” and evil lever-pullers with a German accent that claim to “build back better” after a “great reset”. Of Nazi-supporting billionaires who dream of the financial gain from universal open borders and the geriatric, useful idiots who facilitate that dangerous dream. Of corrupt presidents whose bonfire includes the bodies of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen and women and of megalomaniacal “presidents for life” who happily take on the role of Tolkien’s spider, Shelob, in straitjacketing willful, Western idiots in webs of their own vanities.
Ms. Gay’s demotion reveals the hollowness and fatuity, nay corruption, of the post-meritocratic western world. And it has come not a moment too soon. In the 1980’s my family and I Iived in a large, Latin American city that included the latest German technology for distributing electricity, connecting telephones, pumping water, and disposing of sewage. The problem was the technology was “latest” in the 1940s. We have first-hand experience with the results of several decades of technological decay based on unmeritocratic upkeep.
When the airline pilot is “intersectional” but not competent, when the cross-dressing air traffic controller defines himself as a woman but can’t solve basic geometric problems, when the local policeman was appointed from his home beneath the bridge, you too will understand why meritocracy is important. Canadians know only too well the high cost of a electing a second-rate drama teacher trading on his father’s merit and posing as a competent political leader.
It is well that Ms. Gay was unmasked as the unqualified imposter that she is because her unmasking revealed the pretensions of the people who devised the system that put her in place. It was an apocalyptic moment and a refreshing start to a new year.
When Savonarola ripped the bandaid off the vanities of his day, he unfortunately replaced those Renaissance vanities with authoritarian vanities of his own. It cost him his life. Our job in this new year is to not only tear down the totalitarian towers of Babel that have so vexed our lives this past decade but also to ensure that they are not replaced by those of new fascist wannabes. We do this by keeping watch and speaking out.
In the 18th century, the French philosopher Voltaire was so incensed by the overreach of the French Catholic church that he ended all his letters with “Ecrasez l’infame” – crush the infamous. I propose to update his aggravation by repeating “Destuere verbis!” – destroy with words. Voltaire’s instruction has a long and storied history,
“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.
“Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”
In 2024 save yourself. Speak up about vanities, fatuities and stupidities. Make 2024 a metaphorical bonfire of the vanities of our day.
Speaking of vanities… if you enjoyed this why not pass it along to a friend or relative?
It could of course be said that many right-thinking Christian true believers now openly believe that salvation will come or be ushered in by their "savior" in the form of Orange Jesus descending the steps of Airforce One if he happens to be re-elected as President.
He is of course a religiously and culturally illiterate nihilistic barbarian - a very low brow Borgian.
Perhaps you should subscribe to and promote Praeger "University" as an alternative to main stream Universities
Murray - Quite the discourse my friend - quite the discourse! Personally, I certainly hope that this apocalyptic year you are discussing will be much less severe than the one discussed in the Book of Revelations!
If you want to see a good TV dramatization of the interactions between Pope Alexander VI and Savonorola, go the Prime Video series. - "The Borgias" - the Savonorola saga gets several episodes - ending of course when he was burnt alive at the stake. - Who says that the early Christians did not practice human sacrifice?? Not me. (Pope Alexander (the Borgia Pope) was certainly corrupt - probably a stronger word would better describe that Dude).
Well - my friend - here is wishing You and Yours a Happy and Peaceful New Year!
Your friend - Randy Henkle